The story
Franco Sbarro looked at the great automotive fantasies of the early 1980s, the 12-cylinder exotic and the hot hatch, and decided they belonged in the same body. His answer was a fiberglass shell about 3.1 meters long on a tube frame, with a pair of 1,286 cc inline-sixes from the Kawasaki Z1300 mounted crosswise behind the cabin and tied to each other by nothing sterner than V-belts. One lever worked both 5-speed gearboxes. The left engine pushed the left wheel, the right engine pushed the right, and inside there were 2 of every gauge except the speedometer.
On paper it was a triumph: 240 hp in a car of 800 kg (1,764 lb), a better power-to-weight ratio than a Countach, and a sprint to 62 mph that left a Ferrari 308 GTB behind. On the road it was another animal. The torque came late and thin, the gearing ran dry near 125 mph, and any mismatch between the 2 halves turned into a sudden urge to change direction. Sbarro himself conceded it was hard to tame. His backer, Bernd Grohe, paid for a calmer Ferrari-engined sequel, the Super Eight, which makes the Twelve the wild first draft.
